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In the previous comments from this series, the comments often turned to China. In particular, the debate centered on whether China was culpable in the spread of the virus and, if so, what to do about it. It is that question that forms the basis of this article.
Any answer must arise in the context of our foreign policy and what it seeks to accomplish.
Unlike many other issues, the Blue-Red divide is not a clear one when it comes to foreign policy. There are interventionalists and isolationists (and idealists and pragmatists) in both parties. JFK escalated in Vietnam, Bush Jr. in Iraq and Afghanistan. Clinton watched the Rwanda massacre, but Obama got involved in Libya and with ISIS. Both Clinton and Bush Jr. ignored the Congo Civil Wars (around 3-6 million dead, in case you missed it) while both Clinton and Bush Sr. intervened in Somalia (until Blackhawk Down).
Instead of a broad perspective, Americans seem to take individual positions on individual issues. If you mention China, Iraq, Syria, Venezuela, Russia, Israel or Iran everybody has an opinion. Those opinions tend to be based on their characterization of the other country involved: we have to do X because they do Y.
What the US lacks, what it has lacked at least since the capture of the Philippines from Spain, is a clear foreign policy objective. Prior to the Philippines, the general consensus could have been seen as ‘keep Europe out of our Hemisphere.”
After the Philippines, it split into two camps:
- Save the world
- Protect our core national interest
Other nations don’t suffer from this confusion. For many of them, their foreign policies can be clearly boiled down to a single principle:
- France: protect French national interests, forget everything else
- Israel: protect Jews everywhere
- Communist China: rebuild pride with the Greater China Dream (it is a big dream, a Chinese national once explained to me that Hungary was Chinese because the Mongols conquered it)
- Iran: establish Shia Islamic hegemony
- Russia: Insulate against Western threats
- Etc…
The tension between our two foreign policies results in dangerous confusion. We get involved in wars without a clear mission and other global players are often confused about whether we are seeking freedom or hegemony. At the same time, our national mission extends our national interest. Iraq is a great example: we defeated Saddam in 1991 but promised the Kurds support. We didn’t deliver, and Saddam massacred them. By 2001, we had developed a national interest in making up for our betrayal of the Kurds 8 years earlier. It spoke to our basic trustworthiness on the world stage. The follow-on effects of that extension in national interest are still unfolding.
Iraq was not the first time this has happened.
Our two foreign policy objectives have resulted in conflicts that do little to improve reality while costing us dearly in treasure, lives, and national reputation.
There have been periods when things were different.
The free world achieved great strides in extending freedom in the last days of the USSR. That took clarity of mission and messaging – particularly from Margaret Thatcher, President Reagan and the Pope. It was helped by a lack of that same clarity on the part of the USSR; perestroika was a weakening of ideological resolve.
Today, our efforts in the face of Chinese Communist imperialism and Islamic extremism have been muddled at best. Bush Jr. was willing to talk about freedom, but had no idea about how to get there. Obama and Trump both seem far more muddled, and no more effective.
Today, Communist China, Iran, Russia, and even ISIS have clear missions. We do not. We don’t know what we want, much less how to get it.
Clarity in mission is critical not only to our footprint outside our borders but to the health of our Republic within our borders. France can be about protecting the French, but that isn’t enough for us. Americans aren’t defined by ethnicity or language. Americans seek to define themselves by values.
It is part of why our cultural battles are so rancorous.
To summarize, we need a single guiding foreign policy principle in order to:
- Focus our engagements and limit their resulting costs
- Resist darker forces and their ambitions
- Define our country and its mission
Thankfully, I think we have one.
The Mission
The U.S. was founded on the idea that laws can constrain and direct the energies and ambitions of inherently flawed men. The rule of law is our most unifying principle. When we battle about other values and principles, we do it within the context of law. It is because of this that our mission should be the protection and spread of the rule of law.
The rule of law requires a legal system that is predictable, transparent, and consistently applied. To realize and protect this reality, they have methods of accountability. Most often, accountability involves the free press and voting rights, but not always. Singapore, the world’s largest homeowners’ association is a democracy in name, but it is actually a benign dictatorship governed by predictable, transparent and consistently applied rules. Free speech, when it comes to ethnic relations, is brutally suppressed. Nonetheless it is ruled by law and that sets it apart. It is law that separates it from Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia – it’s closest neighbors.
Many countries have laws, but no rule of law. China legally protects the right of any citizen to petition. It even has a National Public Complaints and Proposals Administration. However, those who avail themselves of that right can find themselves detained in extralegal detention centers called ‘black jails.’ Chinese policies regarding the Uighurs (one million in ‘reeducation camps’) the ongoing suppression of Hong Kong or the coverup that led to the corona pandemic all reflect its extra-legal nation.
A society that does not have the rule of law ultimately harms those outside its own borders.
In China, Venezuela, Iran, Russia and other places, the law is used when convenient to the interests of those charge. It is also ignored when it is inconvenient to those same interests. The law is not protected in the face of Communist Chinese pride, Shia Islamic hegemony or Russian paranoia. The lack of law ruins civil society, undermining a free and responsible citizenry.
The rule of law can, and should, define our natural allies while clarifying our differences with those who defy it. With the rule of law, trade can flourish, people can live more stable and rewarding lives and the worst impulses of those who seek to dominate others can be blunted.
Implementation
This policy is not about nation-building or international government.
We’ve tried nation-building. All our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan did not establish the rule of law. It should be clear that we cannot force other cultures and societies into a legal framework. While some might hold up Japan and Germany as examples of successful imposition of new values, both had highly developed and modern legal systems prior to World War II. Both could work within the law. On the other hand, while the Islamic world has legal systems, those systems are fundamentally at conflict with one another. This leads to a largely extra-legal reality.
For their part, international governments have very limited usefulness. The U.N. is an unaccountable democracy of dictatorships. It is an enabler of those who trample both laws and free. It is often worse than useless.
This policy can be defined in three easy terms: the carrot, the stick, and the seed.
The first step in this approach is simple: the U.S. should help establish an alliance of states governed by law. Just as we assess corruption, money laundering, and human trafficking, we can assess the rule of law (the World Justice Project already does this).
Those who score well within their regions should be granted increasing benefits within the alliance – easier trade and travel, closer security cooperation, and public US and alliance support. Those who score poorly should see the opposite occur.
These do not need to be powerful states as in NATO, or large economies as in the Group of 6-12, or even wealthy countries as with the OECD. Instead, these are states unified by law.
Weaker, lower-income states like Uruguay, Slovenia, and Costa Rica would be welcomed as full members.
This is the carrot and stick.
With this, Taiwan would be granted free trade agreements while China would face increasing censure. Saudi Arabia and Iran (whose oil we no longer need) would face growing restrictions while Jordan would gain increasing benefits. Of course, realpolitik considerations would remain. The current government of Egypt might be granted unilateral concessions as they are more desirable than their opposition. But these concessions would have to be used sparingly and should not be backed up by the alliance as a whole.
The alliance would have a shared defense commitment. This alliance would not be like NATO or a “coalition of the willing”. Unlike NATO, the level of commitment would vary by the level of lawfulness. Highly lawful alliance members would be more eligible for defense than less lawful nations. Likewise, lawful nations would be protected from unlawful nations, but not from each other.
This is also not a ‘coalition of the willing.’ With two particular exceptions, this is not an alliance that would take a war to an enemy. The reason is simple, taking the war to the enemy often does little to forward the cause of lawfulness.
The two exceptions are critical. If a conventional war is launched against an alliance member (say China attacks Taiwan or South Korea), the alliance could respond with an attack on the aggressor’s home soil. This is a normal defensive posture.
The second case is more interesting. If there is a genocide or other massive crime against a population, the alliance would not attack the governments involved or even accept masses of refugees. Instead, it would set up a small amount of territory reachable by locals. That territory would be governed and defended by the alliance. Newer anti-rocket and defensive technologies enable this sort of localized protection.
The goal would be to establish a legal society within the culture being torn apart by extra-legal action. That legal society, and its successes, could then influence the larger culture. Rough historical analogies for this concept include Hong Kong, West Berlin and even Amsterdam (during the Wars of Reformation). West Berlin’s personal freedoms undermined the USSR, Hong Kong’s economic freedoms undermined actual Communism in China and Amsterdam led to greater religious freedom in Europe.
The goal of these cities is not to rescue an entire country by force or to impose the rule of law on another society. I believe both are hopeless goals. Instead, the goal would be to plant a seed, fertilized by us and germinated by those locals interested in a new way of doing things. Taiwan and Hong Kong are so threatening to China precisely because they demonstrate that Chinese culture can be compatible with the rule of law. (As an aside, I wrote a thriller based on how this idea might work in the Middle East. It is titled the City on the Heights and it has 5 stars on Amazon!).
This final element is, of course, the seed.
Hard Reality
How would this look today?
In Asia, we would loudly and consistently speak up for Hong Kong’s independent legal system. We can’t militarily defend Hong Kong, but we might help Hong Kong citizens resettle in Taiwan – a seed we can defend. We would reduce trade ties with China but expand them with those of their neighbors who embrace the rule of law.
In the Muslim world, we would withdraw from Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, but establish seed zones for refugees to build a new reality in. We would withdraw from our formal alliance with Turkey (ranked 107th by the WJP).
In Latin America, we would remain uninvolved in Venezuela (the world’s least legal country) but further, open our trade and other ties to lawful Chile and relatively lawful Colombia (both countries where many Venezuelans have resettled).
We would also rebalance our armed forces with this shift in policy. We would expand our navy and air force in order to provide conventional support to the likes of Taiwan in an armed conflict. At the same time, we would reduce our special forces and army; anti-insurgency would no longer be our calling card.
Finally, we would work to improve the rule of law within the United States. In the World Justice Project, the US is ranked 21st. We certainly have opportunities for our own improvement. In terms of our foreign policy, our policy of extra-legal assassinations has done little to forward our interests (see Note below). Internally, pushing more power and responsibility to the states will increase accountability to those states’ citizens while allowing our legal systems to adjust to our various regional cultures.
Conclusion
The coronavirus has highlighted the dangers of societies without law. The virus is an opportunity for us to clarify our own goals and to take up a foreign policy that betters all of humankind. I believe the change in policy and approach I suggest would result in the flowering of a beautiful new reality.
Even as we were involved in far fewer conflicts, our role as a force for good – for law – would be reinforced. With the carrot, stick and seed we would gradually spread prosperity and peace throughout the world.
Of course, as this is TalkMarkets, it would also enhance the transparency and value of markets in and of themselves.
So, what do you think?
Note on Assassinations
The United States is carrying out a continual campaign of extra-legal assassinations with little beneficial effect. We call them drone strikes. They have not brought us victory in Iraq, Syria, Yemen or Afghanistan. Instead, they eat away at the rule of law.
The US campaign might be modeled on Israel’s own campaign. Israel also assassinations, but in recent years they have been used far more judiciously. Hassan Nasrallah runs Hezbollah because Israel assassinated his predecessor. Today, Israel only assassinates those with particularly dangerous skills (Mohammed Al Zawari) or with blood on their hands (Samir Kuntar). That is why, since the 2014 conflict with Hamas, Israel is accused of only five assassination attacks despite an ongoing and hot conflict.
By comparison, since 2015, the US has launched 13,072 drone strikes in Afghanistan alone. Many of those were assassination strikes. That campaign has brought victory no closer.
Assassination does have a place. It does not break an enemy, but it can only persuade them to leave you alone. This only works if the enemy is confident you won’t strike unless you are provoked.
If a foreign terrorist attacks the alliance, and response time is not of the essence, the alliance would hold a trial. While some evidence might not be publicly disclosed, defendants would be welcome to participate. Depending on the results of the trial, the alliance could punish locally responsible forces or those who should have constrained them. A light punishment could be trade or travel restrictions. In the case of an attack like the one on the World Trade Center, a country could have its entire government decapitated. However, nothing would be built in its place. The alliance’s goal would not be to replace terrorist governments. It would just be to deliver a punishment proportional to the crime.
The same sort of trial could be launched for a failure like allowing the coronavirus to spread.
This court would not be like the International Court of Justice. This court’s only purview would be the defense of alliance nations and it would not be governed, even indirectly, by a democracy of dictatorships.
This sort of trial, in which ramifications are more predictable, transparent, and consistently applied, would make the punishments of those who threaten the rule of law both rarer and more effective.
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